


Tinkering

by Beleriandings



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Big Big Spoilers, Friendship, Gen, Nott has a gun now, cuddlesleeping, episode 26 coping fic, though the coping mechanisms are not great
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 01:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15377772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: An anon on tumblr asked for a fic where Nott learns to use and handle the gun she stole....and then, episode 26 happened :(





	Tinkering

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been Emotionally Distraught over episode 26….so this is very much a coping fic for me for what happened there, though please note I haven’t actually had a chance to watch episode 27 yet. But anyway, Nott has a gun now and I’m very sad. Spoilers obviously, and of course warning for character death and the general dark tone of this arc.

It was only half an hour into Nott’s watch, but it felt much longer, as she sat alone by the side of the dying fire, snow drifting in gentle flakes down around her. She was cold, her eartips and fingers and toes beginning to turn a little numb with it; she flexed her hands, restless motion against the stillness.

It was very, very quiet here in this forest, which was too small even to be marked on the map. More of a tiny knot of bare and twisted trees clinging to a windswept hillock just off the side of the road, but at least it was a little more sheltered than anywhere else.

Nott sighed, stirred the fire-pit with a stick and fed it a few of the dry sticks they had collected, to try to get some more warmth as she looked over at the clump of shadow that was the tent where the others slept.

Or, perhaps not slept. She knew she hadn’t been sleeping, simply lying on her back beside Caleb and staring at the canvas ceiling and chasing her thoughts around her own head before this. She was fairly certain the others hadn’t been sleeping either; the two new ones they had picked up on the road. She didn’t know the patterns of them yet, the sounds they made in sleep, but she could wager they were just pretending. She certainly knew Caleb was; after a while, she had come to recognise the way his breathing sounded when he was really asleep, had learn to always tell the difference between that and him pretending for her benefit.

This time, Caleb certainly wasn’t asleep, though his eyes were closed. She could see the grit of his teeth, the dampness of tears on his cheeks, held back with frozen control until the darkness covered him. The shudder in his arm, the slight tensing of his fingers as though seeking Frumpkin’s familiar fur. But Frumpkin was an owl, sleeping perched on a branch outside, and Nott’s heart ached a little more as Caleb’s fingers found nothing.

(Sometimes, Nott thought Caleb forgot that she could see him even when he could not see her.)

She didn’t try to wake him though; they all had their different ways of shedding tears, and this was his. Instead she just shuffled herself closer to him, slipping under the same blanket and laying her head on his outflung arm until eventually his breath evened out to what could only be true sleep, if a restless, fitful one.

Nott didn’t disturb him – he needed the rest, gods knew they all did – but merely lay awake until Beau came back into the tent, giving Nott a soft nod as she stood up to go take the next watch.

It was little better out here. It was certainly colder, despite the remains of their fire, and Nott pulled her ears inside her hood and her mask over her face, not that it did much. She took a swig from her flask; that was more familiar, the burn at the back of her throat and the scant warmth spreading through her. But even that didn’t do much to alleviate the tension that was keeping all her muscles taut, her eyes darting through the bare branches as the snow fell and her breath gusted out in clouds in the frigid night air.

It was odd, Nott thought; she had spent so much of her life alone, deliberately, out of fear. She was used to solitude, and for so long it had meant safety to her, it had meant freedom. And all it took was a few months, all it took was a little bit of closeness with this group, and at some point – without quite realising it was happening – she had become someone who enjoyed the closeness of others. Someone who trusted them, sleeping around her every night. It had been Caleb first – _no, he had not been the first she had been close to, but he was the first she could think about without pain pulling like a rusty hook in her heart_ – and then the others of their strange little band.

It was so _quiet_ , now, and the silence was what was driving her to distraction, as much as anything else.

She had never even been the closest to Mollymauk, that was the thing. But even so when she closed her eyes she could still see him, as she had from the back of the wagon; his eyes going wide for a brief moment as realisation had come to him that his blood curse had gone awry, that there was no escape now. Nott was hardly aware of what she had been doing then, transfixed with horror as she watched him spit a mouthful of blood, watched Lorenzo’s glaive come down with cruel finality. She thought she might have screamed, but she didn’t remember.

And the others…when she wasn’t thinking of Molly’s blood spread in a dark pool, seeping into the frozen ground, her mind dwelt on that cage she had climbed up to. Jester, Yasha and Fjord hadn’t been there, but they must be in one like it, heading to something that she was trying not to imagine.

(She had been an assistant torturer, once; it wasn’t as though she _couldn’t_ imagine.)

She sighed, pressing the heels of her hands over her eyes until she saw flashes of brightness, rather than let her mind run through that sequence once more. She opened them again, stirring the fire, looking all around, taking another drink. Not very much time had passed since she had started her watch; barely even half an hour she thought, though she had not Caleb’s skill at judging time’s passage. Especially now, when thick, snow-heavy clouds shrouded the moon.

She flexed her fingers again, wishing there was someone here she could steal from. But the others would know, and besides it wasn’t the same if it was them. She needed _something_ though, some distraction. Something to do with her hands, something to do with her mind to keep the darkness away.

That was when she remembered the object she had stolen, back in Hupperdook. It seemed like a lifetime ago, now, even though it was only a few days; they had all been so different then. She bit her lip; the thing was still stuffed through her belt loop. She had almost forgotten she had it.

She took it out now, feeling its weight in her hands. It was heavier than it looked, even colder than her fingers. She inspected it from every angle, tilting her head; here was a challenge, something she could pick apart like a lock and understand. Here was a distraction.

She first considered what she knew; it was some kind of weapon to throw small projectiles, she had gathered from the way the guards held them. It had a little metal chamber, and a sort of catch like the one on her crossbow that was meant to be operated with a finger, she thought. She raised it to her nose and gave it a sniff; it smelled like oiled metal and also something else that Nott recognised, casting around in her memory for a moment before she remembered why it was familiar.

It smelled, she realised, like those explosive sticks they had found in the gnoll mine. So maybe if she lit it somehow, it would explode too? She glanced doubtfully at the fire, before frowning. That seemed dangerous. Gingerly, she lifted up the little metal piece attached to a minute hinge. Sure enough, inside there was a small amount of black powder, and another piece that looked like it hinged down the other way to strike the powder.

Maybe she should take it apart and put it back together again, to try to understand. Satisfied with this, Nott scrabbled in her pouch for her tools and lock picks, unrolled their leather wrap and considered them for a second, before selecting several tools.

 _A distraction_. She laid the strange object on the frozen ground and began to work.

The hours of Nott’s watch passed like that, the snow coming down heavier now, but Nott barely noticed. After a few hours, she sat staring at the object in her hand, thoughtful.

She knew what it did now, and her mind was filled with the possibilities of it. There had even been one single, little metal ball still within it; she rolled it between her fingers, as she thought.

She thought about how this mechanism was designed to throw this tiny piece of metal fast enough to do a good deal of damage to someone. _M_ _ore than a crossbow bolt, even_ _, tearing through flesh and bone…_ she held the weapon in her hand the way you were supposed to, feeling its weight, the stiffness of the trigger against her finger.

“Nott? …Are you all right?”

She blinked, jerking her head up and nearly dropping the little metal sphere in her other hand, momentarily startled; Caleb was not usually so silent as he approached. Or maybe she was not usually so distracted.

“Yes…” she said, after a moment. “…Yes, Caleb, I’m fine.”

Too late, she realised he was entirely unconvinced. Instead, he merely looked even sadder. “It is supposed to be my watch now… you should get out of the cold, Nott.”

“Oh” said Nott, looking around; she hadn’t quite realised how much time had passed. “Um. I can stay up, Caleb, I couldn’t sleep anyway. You can go back to the tent, where it’s warmer.”

He frowned even deeper, folding his arms with a sigh. “Well, it seems like neither of us can sleep. But I will watch, for a while, and if you are here too, then…maybe we can watch together, _ja_?” He came towards her, walking around and kneeling down beside the firepit. He placed a few more sticks on and let a little burst of arcane flame leave his hand, catching the wood alight. He stirred the fire with another stick and blew on it until it was crackling warmly, casting the surrounding trees in orange and gold as sparks shot upwards into the cold air. Then he came to sit down beside Nott, taking off his scarf and wrapping it around her shoulders. She looked up at him, as he did so. He  looked concerned, she saw now; concerned for her, yet there were deep shadows under his own eyes too, and his voice sounded brittle, weary. “You are half frozen” he said, taking her hand in his before she could say that she was fine again. He looked down at the weapon in her hands. “What have you been doing out here?”

“Oh, just…” she frowned, then looked up at him. “Caleb, do you know what this is?”

“Ah, _nein_ , not exactly…”

“Well…” said Nott, “I’ve been looking about it. It’s got this…” she held up the metal ball. “And you use it to kill people. I think…I think I could know how to do that, now. But unless I can get more, it…it only has one shot in it.”

Caleb looked up at her, raising an eyebrow, his eyes reflecting the dancing light of the flames. “And…you know who you want to use it on?” He looked like he understood.

Nott frowned, holding the metal in her hands so that the cold bit into her skin, letting herself slip back into the past, a few days ago and a world away. She thought of Mollymauk, jarringly bright and colourful sometimes but always believing that Nott could be _better_ , always trying to help her to be, however much she had fought against it. Then she thought of him bleeding on the ground, his life draining away and staining the cold earth. She thought of the others, shackled and silenced, sent to be subjected to who knew what torture. She gritted her teeth, as she thought of the fearful man with the cold, cold eyes, the slaver who had broken apart the group of people that she had, so quickly and wholly, come to love. The man who had taken so much from all of them. She looked up at Caleb.

“Yes” she said. “Yes, I think I do.”


End file.
